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By Root 537 0

night before, he made a low growling sound, or slid his knuckles down the cheese grater, or caught his tongue between his teeth and pressed hard. He closed his eyes and he could see his wife crammed against the headboard with that one leg sticking up in the air; he could hear the sound her buttocks made as he two-handedly slapped them into a crimson swelter. Vernon steadied himself against the refrigerator. He had an image of his wife coming into the kitchen—on crutches, her face black and blue. She couldn’t very well not say anything about that, could she? He laid the table. He heard her stir. He sat down, his knees cracking, and ducked his head behind the cereal packet.

When Vernon looked up his wife was sitting opposite him. She looked utterly normal. Her blue eyes searched for his with all their light.

“Toast?” he bluffed.

“Yes please. Oh Vernon, wasn’t it lovely?”

For an instant Vernon knew beyond doubt that he would now have to murder his wife and then commit suicide—or kill her and leave the country under an assumed name, start all over again somewhere, Romania, Iceland, the Far East, the New World.

“What, you mean the—?”

“Oh yes. I’m so happy. For a while I thought that we … I thought you were—”

“I—”

“—Don’t, darling. You needn’t say anything. I understand. And now everything’s all right again. Ooh,” she added. “You were naughty, you know.”

Vernon nearly panicked all over again. But he gulped it down and said, quite nonchalantly, “Yes, I was a bit, wasn’t I?”

“Very naughty. So rude. Oh Vernon …”

She reached for his hand and stood up. Vernon got to his feet too—or became upright by some new hydraulic system especially devised for the occasion. She glanced over her shoulder as she moved up the stairs.

“You mustn’t do that too often, you know.”

“Oh really?” drawled Vernon. “Who says?”

“I say. It would take the fun out of it.”

Vernon knew one thing: he was going to stop keeping count. Pretty soon, he reckoned, things would be more or less back to normal. He’d had his kicks: it was only right that the loved one should now have hers. Vernon followed his wife into the bedroom and softly closed the door behind them.

Granta, 1981

THE COINCIDENCE OF THE ARTS

“THIS IS A FARCE, man. Have you read my novel yet?”

“No.”

“Well why’s that now?”

“I’ve been terribly—”

Across the road a fire truck levered itself backwards into its bay with a great stifled sneeze. Round about, a thousand conversations missed a beat, gulped, and then hungrily resumed.

“The thing is I’ve been terribly busy.”

“Aren’t those the exact same words you used last time I asked you?”

“Yes.”

“Then how many more times do I got to hear them?”

The two men stood facing each other on the corner: that mess of streets, of tracks and rinks, where Seventh Avenue collapses into the Village … He who posed the questions was thirty-five years old, six foot seven, and built like a linebacker in full armor. His name was Pharsin Courier, and he was deeply black. He who tendered the answers was about the same age; but he was five foot eight, and very meager. Standing there, confronted by his interrogator, he seemed to be lacking a whole dimension. His name was Sir Rodney Peel, and he was deeply white.

They were shouting at each other, but not yet in exasperation or anger. The city was getting louder every day: even the sirens had to throw a tantrum, just to make themselves heard.

“Find time for my novel,” said Pharsin. He continued to urge such a course on Rodney for a further twenty minutes, saying, in conclusion, “I gave you that typescript in good faith, and I need your critique. You and I, we’re both artists. And don’t you think that counts for something?”

In this city?

The sign said: Omni’s Art Material—For the Artist in Everyone. But everyone was already an artist. The coffeeshop waiters and waitresses were, of course, actors and actresses; and the people they served were all librettists and scenarists, harpists, pointillists, ceramicists, caricaturists, contrapuntalists. The little boys were bladers and jugglers, the little girls